Bad Smell in New Apartment

My husband, 2 year old son and I moved into a brand new apartment building. We love it! Except for our living room smells like someone has been farting in it all day (sorry for the visual image). We have tried everything to get this smell out, but it's still there. We thought it was our son's diapers making a stink, so we take them down stairs promptly, but it still continues to smell. I've called our maintenance on it, and they just think that I'm crazy when I tell them that my apartment smells and I think it's coming from the people around us.

It might be the ventilation system, is it at certain times of the day? I lived in an upstairs apartment, and our downstairs neighbor was cooking pork chops. The smell came through our bathroom, and I thought our dog pooped in the kid's room! We also smelled cigarette smoke if they were in the room immediately below. I put in one of those fan plug in things, and kept it down okay.

Have you tried getting down and smelling the carpet? The source may be there and easy to locate with a little tummy turning crawling around. If one area of carpet isn't especially stinky, get maintainance back to check the plumbing. Oh, and another cheerful thought, could be a dead mouse in a wall.

The dead mouse in the wall theory could be the one. The mouse could have gotten in behind a light switch plate on the wall. This happened in the house that we used to live in. A mouse managed to wonder into the space in the wall where the light switch was located. Said mouse died and started to stink - the smell could be detected when one of us walked within a few feet of the location. This happened in my son's room, and since he was wearing diapers at the time, I also thought that it might be coming from something diaper-related. Cleaned out the diaper can and checked for signs of leaky diapers in his room and still the smell was there. Got the bright idea to remove the light switch plate cover and saw the reason for the smell..... an almost mummified mouse (GROSS!!!)

Might be worth checking out the removable outlet/switch covers in your room that has the smell :-)

The Ionic Breeze (sharper image) is awesome! My inlaws got that because they have two birds and two bulldogs and a DUSTY house. They only have to dust once a week and NO PROBLEMS with the dust from birds. It is supposed to work great for animal odors (and it seemed to do fine in the bathroom - nothing lingering!)

It's only in our living room and we've checked the carpet. The carpets smelled fine and to be sure, I had them steamed cleaned. It's not at any certain times of the day, and I thought it was the ventalation but the HVAC guy said the whole place would smell if it was that. Do any of those Oreck or Sharper Image air cleaners work?

You know what else it may be? Smells get really bad when the drains in the bathrooms at work get sewage gas buildup. They have to poor water down the drain whenever the smell gets bad to clear the air.

Just in case it's the carpet (and it only costs pennies), sprinkle baking soda all over the carpet. Let that sit for at least 20 minutes or overnight. Then you must Vacuum the carpet. Try boiling white vinegar and water on the stove and let the steam disperse. Don't stand too close to steam. Kills germs as well as smell.